It’s not an Oscar, but Ted Hope and James Schamus, who were honored by the Academy for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, might find the “Filmmaker on the Edge” award that is to be bestowed on them next Friday at the Provincetown Film Festival just as satisfying.

“On the edge of what?” asks Schamus, who along with Hope produced Ang Lee’s Tiger; they also wrote the screenplay together. “Usually these awards look backward rather than forward. I’m glad there’s a festival looking in the direction of possibilities to come.”

“I may not be on the edge,” says Hope. “But other people perceive me that way. I’m always attracted to a strong vision in filmmakers, not material aimed at satisfying the most people. I like a specific, individualistic tale, and consequently we’re in the niches.”

With Tiger and its $120 million box office, Schamus and Hope have gone well beyond the niches. Their success came through being persistent rather than by selling out. In its 10 years of existence, the pair’s production company, Good Machine, has produced Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet and The Ice Storm, as well as edgy indies like Todd Solondz’s Happiness, Ed Burns’s The Brothers McMullen, and Todd Haynes’s Safe.

“Describing what we’ve done to date is difficult because so much of it is centered on finding a home for distinct and different filmmaking voices,” says Schamus. “Certainly the success of Crouching Tiger is on a scale that’s quite different from the earlier successes. At least it has made it impossible for them to say that people won’t go to movies with subtitles.”

Some have seen such successes as a fluke; recently a writer in Variety bemoaned the decline in film quality so far this year. “That’s a journalistic exercise and basically means blah blah blah,” scoffs Schamus. “They do it every two years. And he’s very limited in considering only mainstream releases.”

“It comes and goes in waves,” says Hope. “I don’t think that if we started our company today, we would have been able to get the movies of Hal Hartley or Todd Haynes. The now established great American indie directors would have found it much harder to get their first films financed in today’s marketplace.”

Nonetheless, Hope is, well, hopeful. “The trend that I’ve seen is people attempting movies that haven’t been made before, visionary films that seem planted directly in somebody’s imagination, that have an aggressive desire to entertain and will not talk down to the audience in the process. Films like Being John Malkovich and Crouching Tiger, and even Traffic. That spirit defines independent filmmaking, that and movies created and financed by an entity that is not one of the seven companies that control all of the media.”

The alternative to such alternative filmmaking? “People aren’t aware that their freedom of expression is in danger,” warns Schamus. “A handful of corporations are taking over all the media, and eventually they will have a monopoly over everything that’s communicated.”

In the meantime, we can look forward to Ang Lee’s version of the Marvel Comics superhero The Hulk, which Schamus is now developing, and Todd Solondz’s new film Storytelling, which Hope produced and which just premiered at Cannes. Or, of course, one can join the two at Provincetown and enjoy attractions ranging from Tom Tykwer’s The Princess and the Warrior to a sing-along Sound of Music to a screening of Where the Boys Are? hosted by Connie Francis herself. As James Schamus put it, on the edge of what?

The 3rd Annual Provincetown International Film Festival runs June 13 through 17. For a complete schedule, visit www.ptownfilmfestival.com, or call (508) 487-FILM. “Filmmakers on the Edge 2001: A Filmmaker Symposium” takes place next Friday, June 15, at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall Auditorium. Tickets are $15; call (617) 824-8000.

Issue Date: June 7-14, 2001